U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is hoping that his bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act will get a boost from whistleblower testimony this week detailing allegations that Meta ignored warnings of the harm to teens posed by its social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.
On Tuesday, the Blumenthal-chaired Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law will hear from Arturo Bejar, a Facebook former director of engineering who later served as a consultant to the company.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported Bejar’s efforts to alert CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives to the dangers of bullying and sexual exploitation faced by minors using the apps.
“Arturo Bejar will tell how he warned the top leadership of Facebook — now Meta — that enormous percentages of kids on Facebook were receiving unwanted sexual advances, material on eating disorders and bullying,” Blumenthal said during a Monday morning press conference in the Legislative Office Building.
“He was disregarded and ignored,” Blumenthal said. “In fact, Facebook continued to present misleading data to the public and to the United States Congress.”
Bejar’s disclosures to the Wall Street Journal and his expected testimony before the Senate subcommittee come amid bipartisan interest in holding Meta accountable for allegedly failing to act in the face of evidence that its apps were harmful to young people.
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